Israel Has No Right To Existby Puck T. Smithpuck.smith -+at+- gmail.com

Attribute to The Libertarian Enterprise

I have been watching with horror as the current escalation of violence
between the government of Israel and Hamas thrusts itself upon the
consciousness of the world. It has prompted me to consider the oft
repeated canard about Israel's "right to exist." Based on the
principles that have come to inform my political philosophy I am forced
to conclude Israel has no such "right."

Now before you brand me as antisemitic let me explain what I mean.

From my perspective no nation has a "right to exist" because nations do
not have rights, they are artificial legal constructs, much like
corporations.

At one time the word nation had a valid definition as a group of
people who shared a common culture, language, ethnicity and history
among other thingsthat distinguished them in general from everyone
else. Nation sat at the top of the hierarchy of individual,
family, clan and tribe. With the advent of rapid travel, instant
communication, world wide commerce and mass migration that higher level
of the hierarchy has lost its meaning.

Nation now refers to a geographical territory enclosed by
arbitrary boundaries, usually established by military action, ruled by
a government that claims a monopoly on force within that territory. In
most people's minds that government is synonymous with the nation, so
much so that a government is able to propagandize that a threat to
itself, that is a threat to its monopoly on power, is a threat to the
people as a whole. As a result people have been lead to commit horrible
atrocities in defense of their nation when in reality the only threat
was to the power and privilege of the people who rule them. Nations,
that is the governments who claim to represent them, do not have
rights, they have power, generally usurped from those unfortunate
enough to be enclosed within their borders.

People have rights. Every Israeli, every Palestinianevery
person in the worldhas the right to life, liberty and lawfully
acquired property. As long as those rights are not respected there will
be neither justice nor peace.

The government of Israel unlawfully suppressed the liberty and
expropriated the property of a vast number of individual Palestinians.
Until that is addressed those people and their progeny have a
legitimate grievance. On the other hand, Hamas, and before them the
PLO, have targeted the lives of individual Israelis who did not
participate in the government of Israel's crimes for no other reason
than they happen to be in range. Both governments are concerned only
with preserving and expanding their power, neither is concerned with
the welfare of the people under their control. They exploit their
suffering for political reasons. If that were not true Israel would
stop encouraging and subsidizing the expansion of settlements on the
property of Palestinians, knowing full well it will draw reprisals, and
Hamas would stop provoking the wrath of Israel onto innocent
Palestinians by targeting innocent Israelis and then hiding in
residential neighborhoods.

Neither the Palestinian people nor the Israeli people are to blame. The
blame lies with the amoral elites who rule them and who will stop at
nothing to expand their power, privilege and control.

The state of Israel has no "right" to exist, neither does the state of
Palestine. The people who live in the land occupied by those two
regimes have every right to live free of the pernicious parasites who
will not be happy till the sea is filled with blood.

Written December 29, 2008. Puck T. Smith is the nom de plume of
a man who wishes to live his life in peace and obscurity while at the
same time sharing the insights he has acquired through both suffering
and joy in more than half a century of living in this world of terrible
tragedy, radiant beauty and dizzying possibilities.